


I don't like people. They fuck me up.

by euromagpie



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-23 00:03:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3748120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euromagpie/pseuds/euromagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slight DD AU - Foggy takes Matt to the hospital after him collapsing in his flat. Alone in his hospital room, Matt gets a visitor...</p>
            </blockquote>





	I don't like people. They fuck me up.

Waking up for Matt is always a disconcerting experience; after the deep grasp of sleep, the sudden influx of information takes a few moments to fully get used to. It doesn’t make him a very good morning person.

The last thing Matt remembered was stumbling into his apartment, every ache crying out for attention, and the floor crying out for a hug. Not that he would give in. Well, maybe give in to tending to his injuries, but the next time he was sleeping on the floor would be when he was dying; he did learn something from college nights spent drinking heavily and waking up with a bad back.

What he was lying on was emphatically not a floor. Someone had obviously scooped him up and poured him into a bed. Claire? No, Matt could remember thinking he should call her, but never making it to the phone. But there had been someone…

 _Foggy_.

Shit, Foggy must have brought him to the hospital. Really, Matt should be thankful Foggy hadn’t left him to die in his flat. He must have seen his face, must have figured out, well, _everything_ at this stage. Matt suspected his friend count would be down from two to one by the time he checked out here.

At least his hospital bed and wrists were handcuff-free, so the hospital didn’t know he was the…what did the police call him? The mask. Terrible name, it sounded like some kind of 1950s black and white villain. He could just imagine it: _The Mask strikes again! Will Hero Man save the distressed damsel from her fate? Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion to this radio drama!_

Matt realised he was rambling.

_Right, analyse the situation, Murdock._

Blindly (ha!) he patted the sheets beneath his hand. His sensitive fingers felt the sand-paper like brush of nylon blend sheets. Giving the air a tentative sniff, all he picked up was mint, sterilizing fluid and gunpowder…gunpowder? Not something you’d normally find in a hospital room. Immediately his ears pricked up, zoning into and dismissing the bleeping heart monitor beside his bed, the scuff and shuffle of people moving through the corridor outside, the traffic underneath the window (distant, must be several floors up).

A heartbeat seemed to pop up out of nowhere.

Matt jumped. Well, jumped as much as one could laying down, held together with butterfly plasters and stitches.

A sense of danger settled on him like a blanket, and all his attention as suddenly focussed on the figure standing in a corner of the small room Matt was in; a man, tall, several days without a shower, smelled faintly of gunpowder. Petrol stains on the bottom of his boots, probably.

Matt relaxed.

“Jesus, Frank”.

“You pray to God with that mouth?” The other man replied. Matt had met Frank a few years after he started beating the shit out of the criminal element; they had both been on similar missions. Similar, but not the same. Although they both despised the presence of crime in Hell’s Kitchen, Matt had, so far, refused to result to lethal means. Frank almost seemed to enjoy the slaughter he’d participated in. The blind man didn’t need sight to see that the man was more than slightly unhinged. In the end, the two men had busted a human trafficking ring wide open, but Frank had opened fire on the herded crooks, killing three in a cacophony of screams and wet splats. Matt had been furious.

They had duked it out on a rooftop away from the public eye, both leaving the fight with their fair share of aching bones and bloody shiners.

Even despite their troubled history, Matt never forgot a scent. That sounded a little creepy.

Frank was speaking again, in his raspy growl. Probably eats sandpaper for breakfast just for that sound. Matt kind of likes it; it’s a unique marker for the man.

“So, who finally one-upped you?”

“Why? You worried?”

Frank snorted.

“Rather gonna shake the bastard’s hand. You’re more trouble than you’re worth”.

“Yeah, that feeling’s going around lately” Matt said despondently, thinking of how Foggy must be feeling now. Maybe he had even told Karen. Maybe when he got out of the hospital, there would be no more Nelson & Murdock, secretary or otherwise. Maybe-

“Listen, Murdock, I'm not here to listen to you whine about Nelson taking another girl to prom”. Matt’s head shot up at that. He sensed Frank shrugging.

“I was here when he was yelling at your impression of Sleeping Beauty. Had to be escorted out by several nurses. But apart from your marriage problems, I’m here for information; you're after Fisk. I'm after Gao. They’re obviously in league”.

Matt wetted his dry lips with his tongue, scowling at the disgusting fuzzy feel inside his mouth.

“What’s your interest in Gao?” He asked curiously. He may be laid up, but he wasn’t about to just hand over information without knowing what the man was going to do with it.

“Not your business. But if you know anything it would be a good idea to tell me. Now”. Even a near-deaf man would be able to pick up on the unsubtle threat hidden in that sentence. Really that summed up Frank; subtle as a brick with a perchance for violence.

Matt levered himself up, wincing at the lances of pain stabbing his torso. He could feel a couple of stitches popping as he moved. Nothing live-threatening, though. Sitting up against the backrest, Matt laughed weakly.

“Sorry, can’t be of any help there. They might be in each other’s’ pocket, but I haven’t had the chance to chase that lead as of yet. You’re on your own. Have fun, please let the door hit you on the way out”.

The other man didn’t seem to find the comment as funny as Matt did, judging by the contemplative silence that settled on the room. Thankfully, his heartbeat remained steady, so he probably wasn’t about to launch an attack on the wounded lawyer. Probably.

“Here”.

Suddenly, he felt an object hurtling at him, catching it in one lightning reflexive arm swipe. Matt felt over the rectangle, quickly realising what it was.

“Wow, it’s a book. For sighted people. Thanks” He drawled, making sure to inject as much sarcasm into that comment as possible. Frank growled back.

“I'm not about to go running around looking for one of your punch hole flip books, Murdock. We both know you can read this so take it or leave it I couldn't care less”.

Matt smirked, fingers dancing across the embossed cover. It wasn’t as fast, or as easy, to read typed print as braille, but the tiny imprints were more than enough to allow him access to ‘normal’ peoples’ books. The trouble was going into a store and convincing a clerk to sell them to him. There was only so many times he could use ‘a present for a friend’ before he was going to go mad and strangle an employee.

“...Stephen King. How very…you”. Not that that was a bad thing, but Matt would be damned if he was going to thank the madman.

“Hmph” came the articulate reply. The back-draft of Frank leaving through the hospital window was as good as a waved goodbye to Matt. The other man could leave silent as an angel if he wanted…actually that was kind of a bad comparison, Matt pondered, considering that they always seemed to be accompanied by a fanfare.

Shaking the absent thoughts from his brain, Matt settled down, opening The Gunslinger to the first page.

The struggles of real life could wait until tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> There was literally no reason for this other than I've never written these two but I love their hate-slightly less hate relationship.


End file.
